5 Hacks to Skyrocket Your TEDx Talk
By Bilyana Georgieva, TEDx Coach, Digital Nerd and Multi-Award Winning Professional Speaker, founder of The ‘Soon-To-Be a TEDx Speaker’ Program. You will often hear me saying What’s the point of doing a TEDx if nobody ever finds it on YouTube?
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I use 13 hacks for each of my clients TEDx talk so I asked myself
If I need to chose just 5 tricks that skyrocket every TEDx talk I helped with, what those 5 hacks would be?
I’ll give you those that make the biggest impact. Thanks to these hacks …
- Four of my clients got in the Top 10 World’s TEDx Chart for Most Watched TEDx Talks Released on YouTube.
- Another two were in the Top 20 of the same chart.
- Two were on Nr 36 and Nr 39 in The 50 Most Popular TEDx Talks Released In 2021 on YouTube.
Having in mind that there were about 13,400 TEDx talks published on YouTube in 2021 the above achievements can show you that the 5 hacks I chose today for you are a golden ticket for a successful TEDx talk:
1. Break the TEDx traditions, Put a Key Phrase throughout your talk
You know how each TED and TEDx talk finishes with
‘And remember this today …’
Oh well, it’s too late to do it at the end! Simply because saying it once won’t get into people’s brain. We, humans, need to hear the same phrase over and over before we remember it.
Simon Sinek was the first TED speaker who used a Key Phrase throughout his TED talk ‘How great leaders inspire action’. He repeated “People don’t buy what you do, people buy why you do it” 7 times in an 18 min talk.
Guess what people remember more — the title of his talk or his key phrase?
Of course the key phrase! Thats 7 times planted in the mind.
Now think how much you remember from the last TEDx talk you watched. What’s that one phrase the speaker asked you to remember and you indeed remembered it? Put in the comments bellow if you can quote it?
Tricky, huh?
People don’t remember people’s names nor video titles. However, they remember short, snappy Key Phrases that triggered an a-ha moment and made them change the way they think, act and feel.
It is the Key Phrase that helps people find a TEDx talk years after they watched it..
and that is a golden ticket to keep increasing your popularity years after you’ve done your talk
2. Your Title must be a meaningful sentence
When it comes to TEDx titles speakers do one common mistake — throwing buzz words that make no sense, thinking that’s very ‘TEDx-style-thing’
Open the YouTube TEDx channel from here and skip through the titles. Count how many of them really appeal to you to click and watch? You will realise that only the talks which title is a meaningful sentence are those you desire to watch.
I don’t want to give examples as that will look like a finger-pointing, which is not my aim here.
Every TEDx speaker wants to attract as many views as possible, best to be millions, right?
If that’s you, then please do create a full sentence with your key words.
Just that trick will increase the views with few thousand which at some point creates a snow ball effect of views increase.
3. Use Hashtags
Every YouTube video can use up to 3 hashtags that helps the video to go viral. Yet only 1% of TEDx speakers use this feature.
Here are few tips on hashtags:
- use all 3 of them to maximise your visibility
- Don’t repeat the same Key words you have in your title as that would be a waste of a hashtag. Instead think of another 3 words that describe the problem you are tackling in your TEDx talk
- do your research on hashtags diligently. Use those with the highest amount of views, videos and channels. The more key words you have in hand to compare and choose from, the better.
4. Share your social media profiles in the YouTube description
Skyrocketing your success is not only about the amount of views but also how many people contacted you after watching your TEDx talk.
Adding your social media user name in the YouTube description will increase these contacts.
Think about this — when people watch your video and want to connect with you they will first open the description under your talk to read how to reach you. If there is nothing there they will have to do a long Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc. search to find you.
Make it easy for them and add your social media user name! People will love it, especially when your name is difficult to spell (like mine one) or there are too many people having the same name as you (like mine one).
5. Share your social media profiles in the YouTube description
None of the hacks I gave you above will trigger the YouTube engine if you don’t gain as many views as possible in the first 48 hours after your talk is published. Every topic and category is different but in general if you manage to get couple of thousands views in the first 2 days then the engine will steer the data from the key words of your title, hashtags and key phrase, and will start showing it to strangers that never heard of your name or seen your face.
That’s when the fun starts!
The more views you get and the more you keep sharing in the first week after publishing, the bigger the snow ball effect will be.
To make it happen you need very efficient social media strategies that include all the platforms your followers, clients, partners, suppliers and everyone you know hang around. These are the people who know you in person and will happily support you by watching, liking, commenting and sharing your TEDx talk.
Don’t be shy, ask them for their support
These are 5 out of 13 hacks that help my clients to shoot their TEDx talk in the World’s chart, get thousands of views every day and being contacted by strangers with offers like ‘We would like you to be the director of our organisation’. Yep! That happened to one of my mentees. Simply because people watched his talk and felt that connection with him immediately.
The April’s and May’s ‘Soon-to-be a TEDx speaker’ Crash Course has few available sits. DM me on LinkedIn if you want to join the course and make your TEDx journey easier and effortless. I’m teaching all the hacks and strategies in a Crash Course.
In 4 weeks and 8 sessions you will be ready to rock the stage! I’ll also add all YouTube hacks to your video so your talk can attract thousands of strangers from around the world.
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. Please APPLAUD👏 the article and COMMENT below if you’ve check the TEDx channel on YouTube and saw what I wrote on hack #2. Also SHARE this article with the people around you. You never know.. you might help them achieving a dream.
Sending you love and energy!
Yours,
Bilyana
